How to fix Samsung Galaxy J7 with Black Screen of Death (easy steps)

The black screen of death (BSoD), while it may seem like a very serious problem, is oftentimes a minor issue which may occur if the firmware crashes. Some of our readers that use the Samsung Galaxy J7 have reached out to us asking for help as their phone became unresponsive and won’t turn on.

There are also cases wherein the screen is blank, buttons are unresponsive but the phone sounds off when messages and calls are received. Users may think the screen is damaged but more often than not, that’s not really the case.

In this post, I will share with you a fix to this problem. This isn’t the first time I encountered this issue so I already know a thing or two that could bring your phone back to life even if it has symptoms of the black screen of death. If you’re one of the owners of this phone and are currently bugged by a similar issue, continue reading as this post may be able to help you.

Before anything else though, if you have other issues with your device, then visit our Galaxy J7 troubleshooting page for we have already addressed several common problems with this phone. Odds are that there are already existing solutions to your problems so just take time finding issues that are similar with yours. If you can’t find one or if you need further assistance, feel free to contact us by completing our Android issues questionnaire. Please provide us with as much information as possible so that it would also be easier for us to troubleshoot the problem. Don’t worry as we offer this service for free, so all you have to do is give us sufficient information about the problem.

Here’s a quick fix to the Black Screen of Death on Galaxy J7

As I said earlier, I’ve already encountered this problem a few times in the past and I want to share with you what I did to fix this problem. Regardless whether the phone seems powered on or not, the following procedure will fix it…

• Press and hold the Volume Down and Power keys together for 10 seconds.

This is what we often refer to as Forced Restart. The black screen of death issue is often a result of a system crash and there’s no better way to address such issue than this. The forced restart will refresh your phone’s memory as it will simulate battery disconnect which has similar effect when the battery is pulled from the phone. The J7 2017 doesn’t have a removable battery but if you’re using the 2016 or 2015 variants, then you can just remove the back cover of the phone and pull the battery out, then press and hold the Power key for a minute.

While I’m confident that this method will work for system crash issues, there’s no guarantee it will fix the problem with your phone because we don’t know for sure what to it. So, after trying this and your device is still not turning on, you should try doing some of the troubleshooting procedures below.

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Troubleshooting Galaxy J7 with Black Screen of Death

Some users may be hesitant to follow this troubleshooting guide so if you’re one of those, I suggest you directly bring your phone to a tech or service center to have it checked. But if you’re one of the owners who are willing to do a procedure or two to try and fix this problem, read on as I have a few methods in store for you…

Make sure there’s no sign of liquid damage

Here are the things you can do to know if this problem is due to water considering the Galaxy J7 doesn’t have the IP67 or IP68 rating like the flagships…

1. Look into the USB or charger port for any signs or traces of moisture.
2. Use a cotton swab to clean the area or insert a small piece of tissue into it to absorb any water residue if any.
3. Remove the SIM card tray and look into the slot to find the Liquid Damage Indicator (LDI).
4. If the LDI is still white, then there’s no water damage but if it turned red or purple, then it’s positive that some components got messed up by liquid.

After doing this and your confident that there’s no liquid damage of some sort, then move on to the next step.

Charge the phone to know how it responds

Up to this point, it’s still possible that the black screen is due to a system crash and such may occur if the battery got drained completely. Here’s the fact, when the phone is in standby and the battery goes down below 1%, the phone may still be able to shutdown properly. However, if there are a lot of apps running in the background or if you’ve been using your phone when the battery got drained, there’s always a possibility that some components will be shut off before the firmware can initiate proper shutdown procedure. This may lead to a system crash. So, when you connect the phone to the charger after it turned off, it may not respond to it and the Power key won’t do any good either.

With this in mind, leave the phone charging for at least ten minutes and after which, try turning it on. If it still won’t turn on, do the Forced Restart procedure again but this time while the phone is connected to its charger. What we’re doing here is give the phone a stable power source while we try to boot refresh its memory. If it turns on this time, then consider the problem fixed but if not, try the next procedures.

Try to boot the phone in Safe mode

Now that you’ve charged the phone for a few minutes, we will try to start it up in safe mode to temporarily disable all third-party apps and load only the core services.

1. Turn the device off.
2. Press and hold the Power key past the model name screen.
3. When “SAMSUNG” appears on the screen, release the Power key.
4. Immediately after releasing the Power key, press and hold the Volume down key.
5. Continue to hold the Volume down key until the device finishes restarting.
6. Safe mode will display in the bottom left corner of the screen.
7. Release the Volume down key when you see Safe Mode.

If your Galaxy J7 turns on successfully into this mode, then reboot it and it will boot up normally into the normal mode otherwise, move on to the next procedure.

Attempt to boot your phone in Recovery Mode

Provided that the hardware and that there’s enough battery left, even if your Galaxy J7 has a serious firmware issue, it should be able to boot up into the Android system recovery mode. It is the fail-safe of almost all Android devices. In this environment, the usual Android interface you see when you use your phone won’t be loaded but you would be able to do some troubleshooting procedures that will have a great impact to your phone and two of those are “wipe cache partition” and “factory reset.”

Here’s how to do these procedures:

How to start your Galaxy J7 in Recovery mode and wipe cache partition

1. Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key, then press and hold the Power key.
2. When the Android logo displays, release all keys (‘Installing system update’ will show for about 30 – 60 seconds, then ‘No command’ before showing the Android system recovery menu options).
3. Press the Volume down key several times to highlight “wipe cache partition”.
4. Press Power button to select.
5. Press the Volume down key to highlight “yes” and press the Power key to select.
6. When the wipe cache partition is complete, “Reboot system now” is highlighted.
7. Press the Power key to restart the device.

How to boot your phone in recovery mode and do the master reset

1. Press and hold the Volume Up key and the Home key, then press and hold the Power key.
2. When the Android logo displays, release all keys (‘Installing system update’ will show for about 30 – 60 seconds, then ‘No command’ before showing the Android system recovery menu options).
3. Press the Volume down key several times to highlight “wipe data / factory reset.
4. Press Power button to select.
5. Press the Volume down key until ‘Yes — delete all user data’ is highlighted.
6. Press Power button to select and start the master reset.
7. When the master reset is complete, “Reboot system now” is highlighted.
8. Press the Power key to restart the device.

If your phone could not boot in Recovery mode, then it’s very much possible that the problem is with the hardware. It’s time to bring it to the tech.

I hope that this troubleshooting guide can help you one way or another. Feel free to contact us if you still have other concerns. Thanks for reading!

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